Personally I would put a Tory majority ahead of a hung Parliament in terms of probability without in any way making it nailed on. I would therefore agree that there is some value in the Tory majority price but I am not sure it is enough to get excited about this far out.
The facts that the Tories can lose 39 seats and still have a majority; that the boundary changes may well give them an even larger lead than that, the Labour seem to have an uninspiring leader and a dearth of alternative talent and that the Tories have several options to Boris all tend to suggest to me that they should be favourites for a majority.
The Westminster system really only produces hung Parliaments when there is a significant third party element. Whilst we have the SNP the Lib Dems seem to be making no impact at all and is probably more at risk of being supplanted by the Greens than making a breakthrough at this point.
22% support for a Labour majority is perhaps the most bewildering of all.
+1 - at this moment in time even before anything else changes the odds of a conservative majority really should be 50%+.
However things change and 3 years is a long time to keep a bet open for.
The so called 'British reading' is a bit weird, as it implies the palace is a single hive mind which already knows its own truth. And it would render "The issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning..." entirely disingenuous.
Yes, I read the Palace statement as indicating some differences in view. But predominantly it's an attempt to close it down.
One is "My Truth", as use by Oprah. To me that means "My Opinion".
Another was on R4 earlier - the idea that a personal account of a personal experience is beyond question, and must be accepted as revealed truth. To me - that's just a no; of course it must be tested, especially when not self-consistent.
In any setting where the quality of evidence is important (eg court proceedings, disciplinary matters) the idea that you simply accept a personal account of a personal experience as revealed truth would be rightly considered ridiculous.
The so called 'British reading' is a bit weird, as it implies the palace is a single hive mind which already knows its own truth. And it would render "The issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning..." entirely disingenuous.
"British reading" here means "British press reading", illustrating that the palace have done their pluralising job well so far.
So you're saying the palace are as cynical a bunch of spin merchants as they claim MM to be ?
I wouldn't argue with that.
I wouldn't particularly say that in this particular case. I think that was a clever statement, largely in the Queen's own voice, which contained important concession along with the qualifications to ward off conservative criticism.
I thought that statement quite a straight bat.
In the interim I hope H&M will get asked some straight questions and supply some evidence, as opposed to self-contradictory soft focus stuff. And perhaps to explain the matters that are obviously untrue.
One is "My Truth", as use by Oprah. To me that means "My Opinion".
Another was on R4 earlier - the idea that a personal account of a personal experience is beyond question, and must be accepted as revealed truth. To me - that's just a no; of course it must be tested, especially when not self-consistent.
Things can be true at different levels too.
When she said "I contemplate suicide" I suspect most people took away that she was on the verge of taking her own life.
However, I've *contemplated* suicide a lot when I've been very stressed or fed up. Several times. What this involves is me fantasising for a brief second the instant relief of ending everything by a knife in the chest or gun to the head, following which everything goes away, I can sleep peacefully and I'm free. Sometimes it happens in dreams. Sometimes for a brief moment when I'm awake - "sigh, why do I exist?" - sort of thing. I think about it, let it out, and then it goes away.
Why? Because I realise in seconds it's crazy and stupid. It would be highly traumatic, end in my oblivion, forever, and leave my wife and kid behind mourning (and angry at) me forever, and my problems would simply become someone else's. I'd also miss out on the beauty and wonder of life.
So, really, I have absolutely no intention of really doing it. At no point have I even started to research it, yet alone buy pills, or size up a railway station platform, or look for a weapon. It's just a few seconds on the loo or on my bed from time to time. I'm really fantasising for about a shutdown or reset button. A "go away and leave me alone" switch. And maybe just realising to myself that I have a number of options - I often fantasise about resigning the next day, and running away - or cashing everything I have in, and going to live in Goa or New Zealand -and that's all really just part of me convincing myself I have ultimate control over my life.
So, yes, she may have "contemplated" it like I did, and do not irregularly, and suspect many people do, as she wasn't enjoying it and trying to process the best way out. But she's quite happy to not qualify it or describe it and thus let everyone assume the worst. Because that way she's most likely to get everyone's sympathy on her side.
Maybe she was entirely geninue about it, and on the verge of doing the deed, I don't know. But I think there was a lot of insinuation in her interview, and there were several statements made that I think were clearly insincere - like the idea she didn't do any research into Harry or the Royal Family. So I don't really take the veracity of what she says about anything at face value now because she provides no detail or context through which that can be assessed, which makes me conclude that she takes grains of facts and incidents, extrapolates them so they fit her assumed narrative, and then tells us a story that fits what she wants us to hear.
Why are we stopping HS2 at Birmingham might be a more immediate question for the PM to be asking his ministers.
Why are we doing HS2 at all would seem to be a more pertinent question.
Because Capacity and the ability to then use the existing lines for a lot more local services.
By ensuring all trains run at the same speed it's possible to double the capacity on both the existing and new lines which means 1 new pair of tracks increases the number of trains slots available 3 or 4 fold.
Do we need it post covid - I actually think we do as it's very likely work is going to change in a way that makes long distance travel more rather than less common.
Why are we stopping HS2 at Birmingham might be a more immediate question for the PM to be asking his ministers.
? It's not, Compulsory purchase is going on beyond Birmingham.
I know. Yet there seems to be endless rumours of reviews and leaks of discussions that the northern parts will be put on hold for years or scrapped. Maybe it is all rubbish.
Shame about Piers Morgan. I thought and think he's great.
I know he doesn't satisfy either the TOWIE- watching, or the PB if only every journalist was as good as I would be contingent but I thought he was excellent at his job.
Excellent as a provocateur, rather than a journalist, I would say. Perpetual anger and narcissism, with the occasional entertaining flourish, which is partly why he got on so well with Trump for such a long time, I think.
Incredibly fortunate to have had the past decade he has had still in the public eye.
Phonehacking.
Phone hacking. Fake photos against soldiers. Now ridiculing mental health.
I think it will have had a very clear impact on the bottom lines of Deloitte and Randox.
After a year, and billions expended, the continuing marginal efficacy of system for ensuring the isolation of those who test positive, and their contacts, is probably the single most important failure.
Why are we stopping HS2 at Birmingham might be a more immediate question for the PM to be asking his ministers.
? It's not, Compulsory purchase is going on beyond Birmingham.
I know. Yet there seems to be endless rumours of reviews and leaks of discussions that the northern parts will be put on hold for years or scrapped. Maybe it is all rubbish.
I thought the bit to Manchester had gone through parliament.
Mr Justice Swift ordered that the guidance should be rewritten to remove the words “such as” and “or passport”, to make clear that respondents should only use the sex recorded on their birth or gender recognition certificate. A little more than an hour after the judge’s ruling the text had been changed.
The campaign group Fair Play For Women, which crowdfunded £100,000 to bring the legal challenge, had argued that the ONS wording allowed “self-identification through the back door”.
This is interesting. You'd have thought the ONS would have wanted the sex question to be as unambiguous as possible, but I suspect they were worried about a challenge from other groups.
Of course, whether or not people fill it in honestly is another matter.
That rather begs the question. I suspect trans people feel "honestly" that their sex is what their gender is. Presumably anyone who has paid a small fortune for (literally life-changing) sex reassignment surgery or whatever it is called this week feels this very strongly indeed.
Whether it makes any practical difference is another question. This strikes me as one of those "point of principle" cases designed to enrich the legal profession. I suppose the government will now be able to count the number of people whose gender is different from their birth sex and... do what exactly? Erect more lampposts? Open more libraries? Fwiw when I completed the census before this judgment, the import of this guidance passed me by.
I think one underlying shift here is that the great assertion that "sexual orientation is basic and unchangeable" - once gay, always gay etc - which I think has been a key campaigning point since the start of such campaigns has now changed to orientation being changeable almost at will.
eg Watching an interview the other day the interviewee said 'sometimes I call myself lesbian, sometimes bi."
There have always been people around who have changed their sexual orientation several times in a life, though very few that I have seen explicitly talking about it.
Then to demand that gender is a fundamental identity about which everybody else and the physical environment must realign becomes very hard to justify imo.
Correct me if you think I am wrong here. I think I have detected a change in argumentation over perhaps 15 years, certainly since say the late 1990s.
I think you're wrong. The B in LGBT existed even in the late 1990s. The point and its not original is that there is a spectrum.
Some people are heterosexual, attracted to the opposite sex and only the opposite sex. They can't help who they're attracted to, but neither are they expected to do so either.
Some people are homosexual, attracted to the same sex and only the same sex. They can't help who they're attracted to, but were in the past.
Some people are bisexual, attracted to both men and women. They can't help this either, but in the past may have been able to find someone of the opposite sex they were attracted to but nowadays may not find that's the one they fall in love with, since they're no longer restricted by societies expectations.
Though the idea that gender and sexual orientation are completely unchangeable, rather than able to change with other aspects of personality development is a fairly new one.
It doesn't mean dismissing sexuality as a teenage phase, or even a right of passage. The idea of a spectrum of orientation is not quite the same as shifting along that spectrum, at different times of life.
Let me add a question to both.
So if sexual orientation is innate / unchangeable, why do people change their sexual orientation - either as I pointed out ('sometimes I say this, sometimes that'), or 2 or 3 times in a lifetime?
I think there's also an aspect of different use of language between say Gen X/Y and Millenials. And also an element of fashion. How big that is, I am not in a position to judge easily.
Possibly because they're bisexual but it's easier for people to identify as the sexuality that matches their partner.
Take sexuality out of the equation and change it to something more mundane like hair colour. Some people like blondes, some people like brunettes, some people like redheads and some people aren't bothered.
If someone was married to a brunette, gets divorced, then marries a blonde, then would you think they had been 'living a lie'?
Shame about Piers Morgan. I thought and think he's great.
I know he doesn't satisfy either the TOWIE- watching, or the PB if only every journalist was as good as I would be contingent but I thought he was excellent at his job.
Excellent as a provocateur, rather than a journalist, I would say. Perpetual anger and narcissism, with the occasional entertaining flourish, which is partly why he got on so well with Trump for such a long time, I think.
Incredibly fortunate to have had the past decade he has had still in the public eye.
Phonehacking.
Phone hacking. Fake photos against soldiers. Now ridiculing mental health.
Hope he doesn't end up on GB News.
Sounds like the ideal candidate though.
Or maybe next PM?
I can see Piers and Andrew Neil doing the morning slot together already, with the anger levels from both sides on social media rising to 11.
Personally I would put a Tory majority ahead of a hung Parliament in terms of probability without in any way making it nailed on. I would therefore agree that there is some value in the Tory majority price but I am not sure it is enough to get excited about this far out.
The facts that the Tories can lose 39 seats and still have a majority; that the boundary changes may well give them an even larger lead than that, the Labour seem to have an uninspiring leader and a dearth of alternative talent and that the Tories have several options to Boris all tend to suggest to me that they should be favourites for a majority.
The Westminster system really only produces hung Parliaments when there is a significant third party element. Whilst we have the SNP the Lib Dems seem to be making no impact at all and are probably more at risk of being supplanted by the Greens than making a breakthrough at this point.
22% support for a Labour majority is perhaps the most bewildering of all.
Another factor; "The Tories have parked their tanks all over Labour's lawn".
Shame about Piers Morgan. I thought and think he's great.
I know he doesn't satisfy either the TOWIE- watching, or the PB if only every journalist was as good as I would be contingent but I thought he was excellent at his job.
Excellent as a provocateur, rather than a journalist, I would say. Perpetual anger and narcissism, with the occasional entertaining flourish, which is partly why he got on so well with Trump for such a long time, I think.
Incredibly fortunate to have had the past decade he has had still in the public eye.
Phonehacking.
Phone hacking. Fake photos against soldiers. Now ridiculing mental health.
Hope he doesn't end up on GB News.
Surely he'd be right up their street. The purpose of GB News is to make the flame of Outrage burn brighter for the people who think that the country would be better if uppity women knew their place, there were less foreigners, other countries recognised our greatness, we stopped pandering to deviants like puffs and socialists and wokers and environmentalists and feminists and ...
Personally I would put a Tory majority ahead of a hung Parliament in terms of probability without in any way making it nailed on. I would therefore agree that there is some value in the Tory majority price but I am not sure it is enough to get excited about this far out.
The facts that the Tories can lose 39 seats and still have a majority; that the boundary changes may well give them an even larger lead than that, the Labour seem to have an uninspiring leader and a dearth of alternative talent and that the Tories have several options to Boris all tend to suggest to me that they should be favourites for a majority.
The Westminster system really only produces hung Parliaments when there is a significant third party element. Whilst we have the SNP the Lib Dems seem to be making no impact at all and are probably more at risk of being supplanted by the Greens than making a breakthrough at this point.
22% support for a Labour majority is perhaps the most bewildering of all.
People's expectations of politics, like betting on politics, is either based on a cool assessment of what is likely to happen, or on what they want to happen.
And the LibDems are suffering more than most from the SNP, because the latter is the third party in Parliament, and therefore gets 'called'. Until that happened the Lib or LibDem leader had a chance of getting attention both in Parliament and the Press. Chances which Grimond, Thorpe and Ashdown especially could and did take.
No party has ever won an overall majority after 14 or more consecutive years in power. It’s only happened once after 13 and that was a skin of the teeth job (and with hindsight, a disaster for the party concerned). So there is a logic to this position.
Equally, it should be pointed out that this is a government like no other. Not only was it in a coalition for five years - only the second full coalition in peacetime in the age of universal suffrage (the national government of 1929-32 being the other example) - but Johnson hit the reset button in dramatic fashion in 2019. That was the first time since 1865 a government that had gone backwards at the last election increased its majority, and the first time ever that a government increased its majority after more than eight years in office. Plus we shouldn’t forget that boundary reforms will cost Labour several more seats before we even start.
So the odds look reasonable to me, but the value might be in betting on a Tory majority - even if a slim one.
Historical comparisons seem to me very suspect ... because of Scotland.
50 odd seats belonging to the SNP makes a hung Parliament much, much more likely than historically so. And a Lab Majority much, much less likely than historically so.
Unless Labour recover some seats in Scotland, I think a Majority is just completely beyond them.
I don't see Keir 'Union Jack' Starmer and his vacuous side-kick Anwas 'Private School' Sarwar being the ones able to reverse the years of Labour decline in Scotland. Does 'Red, White & Blue' Keir even understand how all his Jacks are playing out in Scotland & Wales ?
It needs a Tory fuck-up of truly gargantuan proportions for Labour to win without Scotland.
So, the Tory Maj odds look right, but Hung Parly too low and Labour Maj too high.
The 22% chance of a Labour majority does look high. What it needs mathematically is to win 122 seats and lose none. Assuming they don't win every one of the top 122 target seats (and Scotland remains both a big challenge and an unknowable quantity) they have to look at trying to win seats in the top 140-150. Seat 150 is Somerset North East. Seat 132 is Bournemouth West.
Blair against a collapsed government could do it but all that 22% chance rests entirely upon future contingents. It looks high.
If someone changes their sexual orientation, such as a friend of mine, formerly happily heterosexually married with children, coming out as gay, it is generally taken that he was always gay, just repressed and living a lie.
On the other hand, I know straight people who had homosexual experiences as youths , but became firmly heterosexual later. Were they also living a lie, or are they doing so now? No one can know, other than the individual.
I do think that identity is a flexible thing, and how we see ourselves, and how we interact with the world changes over time. I don't see why sexuality should be more rigid than any other durable aspect of self.
I think that's a good analysis, and most people have become fairly relaxed about it. If I'd been asked if I had bisexual or gay learnings as a teenager I'd have been horrified - "Hell, no!" - even though I was more or less tolerant of those who did. Now it's more "Er, I don't think so" with less absolute certainty and no fear of more than mild curiosity from friends. It may be a bit different when you're 16 and under some pressure to work it out, but most teenagers seem pretty open-minded about it. Similarly, parents are mostly taking it in their stride, feeling at least that there are a lot more serious things to worry about.
Mr Justice Swift ordered that the guidance should be rewritten to remove the words “such as” and “or passport”, to make clear that respondents should only use the sex recorded on their birth or gender recognition certificate. A little more than an hour after the judge’s ruling the text had been changed.
The campaign group Fair Play For Women, which crowdfunded £100,000 to bring the legal challenge, had argued that the ONS wording allowed “self-identification through the back door”.
This is interesting. You'd have thought the ONS would have wanted the sex question to be as unambiguous as possible, but I suspect they were worried about a challenge from other groups.
Of course, whether or not people fill it in honestly is another matter.
That rather begs the question. I suspect trans people feel "honestly" that their sex is what their gender is. Presumably anyone who has paid a small fortune for (literally life-changing) sex reassignment surgery or whatever it is called this week feels this very strongly indeed.
Whether it makes any practical difference is another question. This strikes me as one of those "point of principle" cases designed to enrich the legal profession. I suppose the government will now be able to count the number of people whose gender is different from their birth sex and... do what exactly? Erect more lampposts? Open more libraries? Fwiw when I completed the census before this judgment, the import of this guidance passed me by.
I think one underlying shift here is that the great assertion that "sexual orientation is basic and unchangeable" - once gay, always gay etc - which I think has been a key campaigning point since the start of such campaigns has now changed to orientation being changeable almost at will.
eg Watching an interview the other day the interviewee said 'sometimes I call myself lesbian, sometimes bi."
There have always been people around who have changed their sexual orientation several times in a life, though very few that I have seen explicitly talking about it.
Then to demand that gender is a fundamental identity about which everybody else and the physical environment must realign becomes very hard to justify imo.
Correct me if you think I am wrong here. I think I have detected a change in argumentation over perhaps 15 years, certainly since say the late 1990s.
I think you're wrong. The B in LGBT existed even in the late 1990s. The point and its not original is that there is a spectrum.
Some people are heterosexual, attracted to the opposite sex and only the opposite sex. They can't help who they're attracted to, but neither are they expected to do so either.
Some people are homosexual, attracted to the same sex and only the same sex. They can't help who they're attracted to, but were in the past.
Some people are bisexual, attracted to both men and women. They can't help this either, but in the past may have been able to find someone of the opposite sex they were attracted to but nowadays may not find that's the one they fall in love with, since they're no longer restricted by societies expectations.
Though the idea that gender and sexual orientation are completely unchangeable, rather than able to change with other aspects of personality development is a fairly new one.
It doesn't mean dismissing sexuality as a teenage phase, or even a right of passage. The idea of a spectrum of orientation is not quite the same as shifting along that spectrum, at different times of life.
Let me add a question to both.
So if sexual orientation is innate / unchangeable, why do people change their sexual orientation - either as I pointed out ('sometimes I say this, sometimes that'), or 2 or 3 times in a lifetime?
I think there's also an aspect of different use of language between say Gen X/Y and Millenials. And also an element of fashion. How big that is, I am not in a position to judge easily.
Possibly because they're bisexual but it's easier for people to identify as the sexuality that matches their partner.
Take sexuality out of the equation and change it to something more mundane like hair colour. Some people like blondes, some people like brunettes, some people like redheads and some people aren't bothered.
If someone was married to a brunette, gets divorced, then marries a blonde, then would you think they had been 'living a lie'?
Ever since the notorious case of R. v. Arnold Layne (1967) (a 'nasty sort of person' who was 'given time' on account of his 'strange hobby') the extent of polymorphous perversity among the British public has been seriously under-recorded.
Why are we stopping HS2 at Birmingham might be a more immediate question for the PM to be asking his ministers.
? It's not, Compulsory purchase is going on beyond Birmingham.
I know. Yet there seems to be endless rumours of reviews and leaks of discussions that the northern parts will be put on hold for years or scrapped. Maybe it is all rubbish.
I suspect the line to Leeds will be built - the Treasury will want to get home as quickly as possible.
Shame about Piers Morgan. I thought and think he's great.
I know he doesn't satisfy either the TOWIE- watching, or the PB if only every journalist was as good as I would be contingent but I thought he was excellent at his job.
Excellent as a provocateur, rather than a journalist, I would say. Perpetual anger and narcissism, with the occasional entertaining flourish, which is partly why he got on so well with Trump for such a long time, I think.
Incredibly fortunate to have had the past decade he has had still in the public eye.
Phonehacking.
Phone hacking. Fake photos against soldiers. Now ridiculing mental health.
Hope he doesn't end up on GB News.
Surely he'd be right up their street. The purpose of GB News is to make the flame of Outrage burn brighter for the people who think that the country would be better if uppity women knew their place, there were less foreigners, other countries recognised our greatness, we stopped pandering to deviants like puffs and socialists and wokers and environmentalists and feminists and ...
But do all of Sean's personalities really make up a steady and reliable viewership for ratings?
Interesting that Alaska is opening up it's vaccination program to anyone that wants it but only 25% of the state has received a first dose. The UK hit 25% of population receiving a first dose on the 17th February. One of those snippets that makes me think our eventual uptake will be miles higher than the USA.
Mr Justice Swift ordered that the guidance should be rewritten to remove the words “such as” and “or passport”, to make clear that respondents should only use the sex recorded on their birth or gender recognition certificate. A little more than an hour after the judge’s ruling the text had been changed.
The campaign group Fair Play For Women, which crowdfunded £100,000 to bring the legal challenge, had argued that the ONS wording allowed “self-identification through the back door”.
This is interesting. You'd have thought the ONS would have wanted the sex question to be as unambiguous as possible, but I suspect they were worried about a challenge from other groups.
Of course, whether or not people fill it in honestly is another matter.
That rather begs the question. I suspect trans people feel "honestly" that their sex is what their gender is. Presumably anyone who has paid a small fortune for (literally life-changing) sex reassignment surgery or whatever it is called this week feels this very strongly indeed.
Whether it makes any practical difference is another question. This strikes me as one of those "point of principle" cases designed to enrich the legal profession. I suppose the government will now be able to count the number of people whose gender is different from their birth sex and... do what exactly? Erect more lampposts? Open more libraries? Fwiw when I completed the census before this judgment, the import of this guidance passed me by.
I think one underlying shift here is that the great assertion that "sexual orientation is basic and unchangeable" - once gay, always gay etc - which I think has been a key campaigning point since the start of such campaigns has now changed to orientation being changeable almost at will.
eg Watching an interview the other day the interviewee said 'sometimes I call myself lesbian, sometimes bi."
There have always been people around who have changed their sexual orientation several times in a life, though very few that I have seen explicitly talking about it.
Then to demand that gender is a fundamental identity about which everybody else and the physical environment must realign becomes very hard to justify imo.
Correct me if you think I am wrong here. I think I have detected a change in argumentation over perhaps 15 years, certainly since say the late 1990s.
I think you're wrong. The B in LGBT existed even in the late 1990s. The point and its not original is that there is a spectrum.
Some people are heterosexual, attracted to the opposite sex and only the opposite sex. They can't help who they're attracted to, but neither are they expected to do so either.
Some people are homosexual, attracted to the same sex and only the same sex. They can't help who they're attracted to, but were in the past.
Some people are bisexual, attracted to both men and women. They can't help this either, but in the past may have been able to find someone of the opposite sex they were attracted to but nowadays may not find that's the one they fall in love with, since they're no longer restricted by societies expectations.
Though the idea that gender and sexual orientation are completely unchangeable, rather than able to change with other aspects of personality development is a fairly new one.
It doesn't mean dismissing sexuality as a teenage phase, or even a right of passage. The idea of a spectrum of orientation is not quite the same as shifting along that spectrum, at different times of life.
Let me add a question to both.
So if sexual orientation is innate / unchangeable, why do people change their sexual orientation - either as I pointed out ('sometimes I say this, sometimes that'), or 2 or 3 times in a lifetime?
I think there's also an aspect of different use of language between say Gen X/Y and Millenials. And also an element of fashion. How big that is, I am not in a position to judge easily.
Possibly because they're bisexual but it's easier for people to identify as the sexuality that matches their partner.
Take sexuality out of the equation and change it to something more mundane like hair colour. Some people like blondes, some people like brunettes, some people like redheads and some people aren't bothered.
If someone was married to a brunette, gets divorced, then marries a blonde, then would you think they had been 'living a lie'?
Ever since the notorious case of R. v. Arnold Layne (1967) (a 'nasty sort of person' who was 'given time' on account of his 'strange hobby') the extent of polymorphous perversity among the British public has been seriously under-recorded.
Boris has a piece in the Telegraph trying to save the union by promising a ton of road and rail projects. Dualing the A1 etc.
"So together with Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, I have asked Sir Peter Hendy to address the problem of Union connectivity. He has just produced his interim report, before final conclusions in the summer."
Good. Our infrastructure is backwards compared to so many other developed countries. For many reasons: 1. Crap project delivery. Dates all the way back to the open corruption of Ernest Marples in the 60s 2. Idiotic "who will pay for it" stupidity where investment = subsidy = communism. 3. NIMBYism. You can't build that (anything) there (anywhere) because it will Ruin England 4. Political short-termism. Projects get announced, then by the time there's been the usual NIMBY planning enquiry it either gets cancelled or truncated. Lots of roads to nowhere where the strategic plan gets lost in a change of government and yet another review 5. Lack of capability. Rail privatisation's lengthy hiatus in spending money on anything largely killed both the train building and infrastructure industry capabilities to do anything. Which is why we seem incapable of wiring a few miles of track or upgrading the signals without vast cost vs previous and foreign assistance.
If Shagger really wants to do something big, don't just reannounce already proposed schemes. Hive strategic planning off to a politically neutral organisation. Make the ORR independent of government. Almost all of these projects deliver either very positive ROI or positive community benefits. The ability to raise revenues from a variety of sources is critical - borrow money at government (near zero long term interest) rates on a long term payback.
Personally I would put a Tory majority ahead of a hung Parliament in terms of probability without in any way making it nailed on. I would therefore agree that there is some value in the Tory majority price but I am not sure it is enough to get excited about this far out.
The facts that the Tories can lose 39 seats and still have a majority; that the boundary changes may well give them an even larger lead than that, the Labour seem to have an uninspiring leader and a dearth of alternative talent and that the Tories have several options to Boris all tend to suggest to me that they should be favourites for a majority.
The Westminster system really only produces hung Parliaments when there is a significant third party element. Whilst we have the SNP the Lib Dems seem to be making no impact at all and are probably more at risk of being supplanted by the Greens than making a breakthrough at this point.
22% support for a Labour majority is perhaps the most bewildering of all.
Another factor; "The Tories have parked their tanks all over Labour's lawn".
I see it rather more as the pandemic means the Tories have been forced to borrow all the money that Labour would have wanted for its pet (public sector) projects.
And as I have been saying 2019, Boris just sees a good Labour policy as a good policy. And implements it before Labour gets power to do it themselves. That leaves Labour with a manifesto of stuff the voters look at askance.
Shame about Piers Morgan. I thought and think he's great.
I know he doesn't satisfy either the TOWIE- watching, or the PB if only every journalist was as good as I would be contingent but I thought he was excellent at his job.
Excellent as a provocateur, rather than a journalist, I would say. Perpetual anger and narcissism, with the occasional entertaining flourish, which is partly why he got on so well with Trump for such a long time, I think.
Incredibly fortunate to have had the past decade he has had still in the public eye.
Phonehacking.
Phone hacking. Fake photos against soldiers. Now ridiculing mental health.
Hope he doesn't end up on GB News.
Surely he'd be right up their street. The purpose of GB News is to make the flame of Outrage burn brighter for the people who think that the country would be better if uppity women knew their place, there were less foreigners, other countries recognised our greatness, we stopped pandering to deviants like puffs and socialists and wokers and environmentalists and feminists and ...
But do all of Sean's personalities really make up a steady and reliable viewership for ratings?
Only if the breakfast show goes out in the afternoon!
Personally I cannot see a mass market for GB news. There isn't much market already for serious news, politics and current affairs on TV. It looks to me a niche vanity project by people who think their opinions matter.
Shame about Piers Morgan. I thought and think he's great.
I know he doesn't satisfy either the TOWIE- watching, or the PB if only every journalist was as good as I would be contingent but I thought he was excellent at his job.
Excellent as a provocateur, rather than a journalist, I would say. Perpetual anger and narcissism, with the occasional entertaining flourish, which is partly why he got on so well with Trump for such a long time, I think.
Incredibly fortunate to have had the past decade he has had still in the public eye.
Phonehacking.
Phone hacking. Fake photos against soldiers. Now ridiculing mental health.
Hope he doesn't end up on GB News.
Surely he'd be right up their street. The purpose of GB News is to make the flame of Outrage burn brighter for the people who think that the country would be better if uppity women knew their place, there were less foreigners, other countries recognised our greatness, we stopped pandering to deviants like puffs and socialists and wokers and environmentalists and feminists and ...
But do all of Sean's personalities really make up a steady and reliable viewership for ratings?
Only if the breakfast show goes out in the afternoon!
Personally I cannot see a mass market for GB news. There isn't much market already for serious news, politics and current affairs on TV. It looks to me a niche vanity project by people who think their opinions matter.
Twitter is a vanity project for people who think their opinions matter!
Re: talk of elderly monarchs as a 'problem' in the previous thread. FFS these days it appears that a US Presidential Election candidate has to be 70 to even get a look in. And they actually have serious power!
I think that's a baby boomer generation effect.
Clinton, Bush the Younger and Trump were all born in 1946. In 1992 this generation was young in Presidential terms - 46 years old - but in 2020 they are old - 74 years old - but it's the same generation.
When that generation's grasp on power is loosened I'd expect the cult of the young to be re-established.
Shame about Piers Morgan. I thought and think he's great.
I know he doesn't satisfy either the TOWIE- watching, or the PB if only every journalist was as good as I would be contingent but I thought he was excellent at his job.
Excellent as a provocateur, rather than a journalist, I would say. Perpetual anger and narcissism, with the occasional entertaining flourish, which is partly why he got on so well with Trump for such a long time, I think.
Incredibly fortunate to have had the past decade he has had still in the public eye.
Phonehacking.
Phone hacking. Fake photos against soldiers. Now ridiculing mental health.
Hope he doesn't end up on GB News.
Surely he'd be right up their street. The purpose of GB News is to make the flame of Outrage burn brighter for the people who think that the country would be better if uppity women knew their place, there were less foreigners, other countries recognised our greatness, we stopped pandering to deviants like puffs and socialists and wokers and environmentalists and feminists and ...
But do all of Sean's personalities really make up a steady and reliable viewership for ratings?
Only if the breakfast show goes out in the afternoon!
Personally I cannot see a mass market for GB news. There isn't much market already for serious news, politics and current affairs on TV. It looks to me a niche vanity project by people who think their opinions matter.
Twitter is a vanity project for people who think their opinions matter!
Boris has a piece in the Telegraph trying to save the union by promising a ton of road and rail projects. Dualing the A1 etc.
"So together with Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, I have asked Sir Peter Hendy to address the problem of Union connectivity. He has just produced his interim report, before final conclusions in the summer."
Good. Our infrastructure is backwards compared to so many other developed countries. For many reasons: 1. Crap project delivery. Dates all the way back to the open corruption of Ernest Marples in the 60s 2. Idiotic "who will pay for it" stupidity where investment = subsidy = communism. 3. NIMBYism. You can't build that (anything) there (anywhere) because it will Ruin England 4. Political short-termism. Projects get announced, then by the time there's been the usual NIMBY planning enquiry it either gets cancelled or truncated. Lots of roads to nowhere where the strategic plan gets lost in a change of government and yet another review 5. Lack of capability. Rail privatisation's lengthy hiatus in spending money on anything largely killed both the train building and infrastructure industry capabilities to do anything. Which is why we seem incapable of wiring a few miles of track or upgrading the signals without vast cost vs previous and foreign assistance.
If Shagger really wants to do something big, don't just reannounce already proposed schemes. Hive strategic planning off to a politically neutral organisation. Make the ORR independent of government. Almost all of these projects deliver either very positive ROI or positive community benefits. The ability to raise revenues from a variety of sources is critical - borrow money at government (near zero long term interest) rates on a long term payback.
They should also take a serious look at Musk's Boring Company. His ideas for standardising and massively speeding up the tunnel boring process are simple in concept, but appear to have potential massive cost savings. https://www.boringcompany.com/faq
I'd be interested to know what @Casino_Royale makes of them.
Life isn't as simple as that though. On numerous occasions I have been involved in decisions where a supplier has excluded/included itself because of its behaviour, without being aware of it. In one notable occasion on a massive deal on which I was working on for a large US Corporation many decades ago the preferred and obvious supplier for something they would have been unaware of at the time disqualified themselves because of their behaviour on another issue. They would be completely unaware of this.
Shame about Piers Morgan. I thought and think he's great.
I know he doesn't satisfy either the TOWIE- watching, or the PB if only every journalist was as good as I would be contingent but I thought he was excellent at his job.
Excellent as a provocateur, rather than a journalist, I would say. Perpetual anger and narcissism, with the occasional entertaining flourish, which is partly why he got on so well with Trump for such a long time, I think.
Incredibly fortunate to have had the past decade he has had still in the public eye.
Phonehacking.
Phone hacking. Fake photos against soldiers. Now ridiculing mental health.
Hope he doesn't end up on GB News.
Surely he'd be right up their street. The purpose of GB News is to make the flame of Outrage burn brighter for the people who think that the country would be better if uppity women knew their place, there were less foreigners, other countries recognised our greatness, we stopped pandering to deviants like puffs and socialists and wokers and environmentalists and feminists and ...
But do all of Sean's personalities really make up a steady and reliable viewership for ratings?
Only if the breakfast show goes out in the afternoon!
Personally I cannot see a mass market for GB news. There isn't much market already for serious news, politics and current affairs on TV. It looks to me a niche vanity project by people who think their opinions matter.
Twitter is a vanity project for people who think their opinions matter!
But most people on Twitter are happy with an average audience of 200. OK, that's a low bar for GB news to break, but it wouldn't surprise me if it frequently doesn't manage it.
Sky News's total *weekly* reach is a bit over 9m. There must be plenty of times in the day when they've got fewer viewers than their tweets are reaching.
ETA: The "small" (i.e. 'who?') news channels seem to get about 200-500k viewers a week. That's a good indicator for where GB news sits.
Dualing the A1 north of Morpeth to the Scottish Border would be nice and would open up more of Northumberland as Newcastle commuter towns.
In the early 90s the Major government feared for its Scottish borders seats and rapidly built the M6 north from Gretna to join up with the existing M74. That the middle of nowhere M6* was 3 lane and the commuter M74 was 2 lane wasn't lost on anyone - look voters at our benevolence! Didn't work.
Come forward a decade. The Scottish government was building the A1(M)* extension out past Dunbar and offered to keep going to the Border if England would do Morpeth - Berwick. As The Highways Agency wasn't interested the Scottish scheme ended at Dunbar.
*What is now the A74(M) was built by M6 Fastlink Ltd and has M6 plated over by A74(M) on all the signs. Some have been removed on slip roads along the route. Can't be called M6 decreed the new Scottish Parliament, that is an English motorway. Similar for the A1(M), A90(M) and all the other roads in Scotland with motorway restrictions and green signs.
Boris has a piece in the Telegraph trying to save the union by promising a ton of road and rail projects. Dualing the A1 etc.
"So together with Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, I have asked Sir Peter Hendy to address the problem of Union connectivity. He has just produced his interim report, before final conclusions in the summer."
Good. Our infrastructure is backwards compared to so many other developed countries. For many reasons: 1. Crap project delivery. Dates all the way back to the open corruption of Ernest Marples in the 60s 2. Idiotic "who will pay for it" stupidity where investment = subsidy = communism. 3. NIMBYism. You can't build that (anything) there (anywhere) because it will Ruin England 4. Political short-termism. Projects get announced, then by the time there's been the usual NIMBY planning enquiry it either gets cancelled or truncated. Lots of roads to nowhere where the strategic plan gets lost in a change of government and yet another review 5. Lack of capability. Rail privatisation's lengthy hiatus in spending money on anything largely killed both the train building and infrastructure industry capabilities to do anything. Which is why we seem incapable of wiring a few miles of track or upgrading the signals without vast cost vs previous and foreign assistance.
If Shagger really wants to do something big, don't just reannounce already proposed schemes. Hive strategic planning off to a politically neutral organisation. Make the ORR independent of government. Almost all of these projects deliver either very positive ROI or positive community benefits. The ability to raise revenues from a variety of sources is critical - borrow money at government (near zero long term interest) rates on a long term payback.
The most significant decision was made last year - when the economic benefits were changed to avoid a bias towards the South East due to it's economic strength.
I can see Piers and Andrew Neil doing the morning slot together already, with the anger levels from both sides on social media rising to 11.
Sounds like Piers would need some help with moving on, if he's nursing such bitterness about being knocked back.
Perhaps the opening credits to their show could include a photo of a more senior newsman with a younger woman on the make, showing that not all is bitterness and rancour. Is there such a photo somewhere?
Fundamentally that is where life in the UK and the US differ. Many/most(?) people in this country have a sort of contradictory view of the press. They think it is too intrusive, has far too much power, abuses that power frequently, and is often a malign force in the body politic and public life. But what people desperately want is self regulation - they want the press to realise that themselves and control themselves as a result - they are extremely wary of any attempt to take legal measures to restrict their activity. Because of where that can ultimately lead.
I'm not sure that most people have given it much thought. They don't do more than glance at the papers, think them quite interesting/titillating now and then, but also unreliable.
But the US and UK have very different starting points. With the exception of the National Enquirer et al, the US press is largely sober and likes to project a factual air, though politically-aware readers can see the biases. In the UK it's nearly all a mixture of entertainment and bias, with balanced representation of the facts coming a poor third. I don't think most people would mind a more proactive PCC with more teeth, so that a clearly deliberate misrepresentation would carry a painful fine as well as a requirement for a large front-page apology.
In case anyone's interested, I have a complaint in with the ASA at the moment. The AHDB (whose job is to promote British agriculture) had a series of ads suggesting that meat is based on water from the sky and crops that humans can't eat, with an illustration of animals happily cantering over fields. Since most meat comes from grim factory farms in which the animals never leave the building and are fed on imported grain (eminently edible by humans), I argued that it was misleading. I'm not against people eating meat if it's humanely-raised, and I accept the right of consumers to eat any old meat that the Government allows. But I don't think that consumers should be actively misled, and that's probably a consensus view among most people. The ASA have yet to rule.
If someone changes their sexual orientation, such as a friend of mine, formerly happily heterosexually married with children, coming out as gay, it is generally taken that he was always gay, just repressed and living a lie.
On the other hand, I know straight people who had homosexual experiences as youths , but became firmly heterosexual later. Were they also living a lie, or are they doing so now? No one can know, other than the individual.
I do think that identity is a flexible thing, and how we see ourselves, and how we interact with the world changes over time. I don't see why sexuality should be more rigid than any other durable aspect of self.
I think that's a good analysis, and most people have become fairly relaxed about it. If I'd been asked if I had bisexual or gay learnings as a teenager I'd have been horrified - "Hell, no!" - even though I was more or less tolerant of those who did. Now it's more "Er, I don't think so" with less absolute certainty and no fear of more than mild curiosity from friends. It may be a bit different when you're 16 and under some pressure to work it out, but most teenagers seem pretty open-minded about it. Similarly, parents are mostly taking it in their stride, feeling at least that there are a lot more serious things to worry about.
I'd have thought most people who have spent a lot of time in a single sex environment as teenagers or young people (eg boarding schools, or universities when single-sex colleges were common) would have had a homoxeual experience, yet see themselves as heterosexual in later life. I think George Melly said that it was only when he met girls for the first time in his twenties that he realised heterosexuality was a thing.
On thread.. how many times since Blair gave punters called elections right..
Someone must have done the charts! It sounds like the kind of thing someone will not have been able to resist. "For each election, charted by time from election, what is the variance between the implied probability and the actual result."
Boris has a piece in the Telegraph trying to save the union by promising a ton of road and rail projects. Dualing the A1 etc.
"So together with Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, I have asked Sir Peter Hendy to address the problem of Union connectivity. He has just produced his interim report, before final conclusions in the summer."
Good. Our infrastructure is backwards compared to so many other developed countries. For many reasons: 1. Crap project delivery. Dates all the way back to the open corruption of Ernest Marples in the 60s 2. Idiotic "who will pay for it" stupidity where investment = subsidy = communism. 3. NIMBYism. You can't build that (anything) there (anywhere) because it will Ruin England 4. Political short-termism. Projects get announced, then by the time there's been the usual NIMBY planning enquiry it either gets cancelled or truncated. Lots of roads to nowhere where the strategic plan gets lost in a change of government and yet another review 5. Lack of capability. Rail privatisation's lengthy hiatus in spending money on anything largely killed both the train building and infrastructure industry capabilities to do anything. Which is why we seem incapable of wiring a few miles of track or upgrading the signals without vast cost vs previous and foreign assistance.
If Shagger really wants to do something big, don't just reannounce already proposed schemes. Hive strategic planning off to a politically neutral organisation. Make the ORR independent of government. Almost all of these projects deliver either very positive ROI or positive community benefits. The ability to raise revenues from a variety of sources is critical - borrow money at government (near zero long term interest) rates on a long term payback.
It tends to be very, very hard to demonstrate a compelling business case for transport investment for major projects. If you can get a benefit:cost ratio (BCR) of sort of somewhere near 1 - that is, if benefits, under the most optimistic scenarios, come anywhere near costs - you are doing well. This is partly down to the way BCRs are assessed, but also reflects that most of the worthwhile transport investments have already been made. That's not to say you shouldn't invest in transport infrastructure, nor that transport investment can't have significant benefits - just that it is very hard to demonstrate those benefits in advance or to make the case for it apolitically.
On thread.. how many times since Blair gave punters called elections right..
Someone must have done the charts! It sounds like the kind of thing someone will not have been able to resist. "For each election, charted by time from election, what is the variance between the implied probability and the actual result."
I hope so.. for locals, general elections referenda etc.
Also, for Labour to win, the opposition has to be credible with a known leader who is liked by voters . Labour have neither right now.
The so called 'British reading' is a bit weird, as it implies the palace is a single hive mind which already knows its own truth. And it would render "The issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning..." entirely disingenuous.
Yes, I read the Palace statement as indicating some differences in view. But predominantly it's an attempt to close it down.
More likely , an innocent remark blown into something that it was not.
Stupid ignorant report based simply on the fact test and trace alone was not a magic silver bullet to prevent future lockdowns the day after Chris Whitty told MPs that test and trace was key to their science, their modelling, how they were able to identify the Kent variant and why they were now confident to unlock.
I suppose that doesn't make as snappy a headline for Tw@tter though does it?
European vaccine roll out - slow supply is only part of the story - country roll outs have been slow too (along with focussing on delivering second doses):
Boris has a piece in the Telegraph trying to save the union by promising a ton of road and rail projects. Dualing the A1 etc.
"So together with Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, I have asked Sir Peter Hendy to address the problem of Union connectivity. He has just produced his interim report, before final conclusions in the summer."
Good. Our infrastructure is backwards compared to so many other developed countries. For many reasons: 1. Crap project delivery. Dates all the way back to the open corruption of Ernest Marples in the 60s 2. Idiotic "who will pay for it" stupidity where investment = subsidy = communism. 3. NIMBYism. You can't build that (anything) there (anywhere) because it will Ruin England 4. Political short-termism. Projects get announced, then by the time there's been the usual NIMBY planning enquiry it either gets cancelled or truncated. Lots of roads to nowhere where the strategic plan gets lost in a change of government and yet another review 5. Lack of capability. Rail privatisation's lengthy hiatus in spending money on anything largely killed both the train building and infrastructure industry capabilities to do anything. Which is why we seem incapable of wiring a few miles of track or upgrading the signals without vast cost vs previous and foreign assistance.
If Shagger really wants to do something big, don't just reannounce already proposed schemes. Hive strategic planning off to a politically neutral organisation. Make the ORR independent of government. Almost all of these projects deliver either very positive ROI or positive community benefits. The ability to raise revenues from a variety of sources is critical - borrow money at government (near zero long term interest) rates on a long term payback.
They should also take a serious look at Musk's Boring Company. His ideas for standardising and massively speeding up the tunnel boring process are simple in concept, but appear to have potential massive cost savings. https://www.boringcompany.com/faq
I'd be interested to know what @Casino_Royale makes of them.
The Boring Company is interesting - but not for the technology. Which is mostly standard stuff.
What is interesting is why it might be cheaper and the opposition to it.
SpaceX ripped up the launch business by not following the contracting-out-to-a-contractor-who-contracts-out-to-a-{10 iterations here} model.
What the Boring Company is looking at is a similar concept. And the opposition to contracts with them is also interesting - I've heard quotes about "This is a high value, high pay industry - we don't want it disrupted"
A lot of people feed off big public contracts. When space launch went from 500 million a launch to 50 million (and falling) a lot of people lost their rice bowls.
Historically after 10 or more years of a party in power as the largest party the opposition party has got in ie 1945, 1964, 1997, 2010 with one exception 1992 and even that looked like a hung parliament even up to election night when Major scraped home with an overall majority.
Today's Comres gives a 6% Tory lead, actually 1% smaller than the 7% lead Major got in 1992 which gave him a majority of 21.
European vaccine roll out - slow supply is only part of the story - country roll outs have been slow too (along with focussing on delivering second doses):
Some (eg Malta) have over-delivered EU supply by buying privately.
Very interesting article in the current Pharmaceutical Journal on the process Coventry Hospital went through to get ready to give the first vaccination, to Mrs Keenan.
Worse than the direct cost of the system itself is the knock-on cost to the economy and lives lost.
Even if Test and Trace had only managed to slow things down a little it would have made a massive difference, but they still can't tell us how many people self-isolate when asked to?
Stupid ignorant report based simply on the fact test and trace alone was not a magic silver bullet to prevent future lockdowns the day after Chris Whitty told MPs that test and trace was key to their science, their modelling, how they were able to identify the Kent variant and why they were now confident to unlock.
I suppose that doesn't make as snappy a headline for Tw@tter though does it?
Testing certainly key. A lot of the tracing information useful for the science could have been done with smaller targeted tracing (i.e. a representative sample). It clearly had value, but maybe not enough to justify the expenditure, compared to other things it may have been spent on (e.g. more mass testing).
I think it will have had a very clear impact on the bottom lines of Deloitte and Randox.
After a year, and billions expended, the continuing marginal efficacy of system for ensuring the isolation of those who test positive, and their contacts, is probably the single most important failure.
Ultimately the vaccine programme will override this but unfortunately it's meant months of unnecessary lockdown and tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths from June until now forgetting the £38bn spent on this useless system.
The cost of getting the testing strategy so wrong probably runs into the hundreds of billions when taking economic damage into account.
There needs to be a very thorough investigation into this so we don't repeat those mistakes when the next pandemic arrives from China.
Why are we stopping HS2 at Birmingham might be a more immediate question for the PM to be asking his ministers.
Why are we doing HS2 at all would seem to be a more pertinent question.
That on would be because we need a transport system for the 21st Century.
Meaningless.
Nope - we either transport people around the country or we don't.
If it is easy to transport people round the country money is spent that would otherwise not be spent, deals are done that would otherwise not ben done and more money circulates around the economy more quickly.
The so called 'British reading' is a bit weird, as it implies the palace is a single hive mind which already knows its own truth. And it would render "The issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning..." entirely disingenuous.
Yes, I read the Palace statement as indicating some differences in view. But predominantly it's an attempt to close it down.
More likely , an innocent remark blown into something that it was not.
But Meghan had a roaming brief to drag the royal family into the 21st century by rooting out pockets of oldthink and smothering it with fairy dust. It would have been a failure of duty if she didn't find any and a failure of fairy dust if it persisted thereafter.
Why are we stopping HS2 at Birmingham might be a more immediate question for the PM to be asking his ministers.
Why are we doing HS2 at all would seem to be a more pertinent question.
That on would be because we need a transport system for the 21st Century.
Meaningless.
HS2 is pretty simple: If you are building a new main line you build high speed. So the question is "do we need more rail capacity" to which the simple answer is yes. Other projects could have been built instead - the proposed M25 railway, more reopenings etc etc - all of which drives more traffic onto a rail network that has a significantly over-capacity core route between London and Birmingham.
Boris has a piece in the Telegraph trying to save the union by promising a ton of road and rail projects. Dualing the A1 etc.
"So together with Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, I have asked Sir Peter Hendy to address the problem of Union connectivity. He has just produced his interim report, before final conclusions in the summer."
Good. Our infrastructure is backwards compared to so many other developed countries. For many reasons: 1. Crap project delivery. Dates all the way back to the open corruption of Ernest Marples in the 60s 2. Idiotic "who will pay for it" stupidity where investment = subsidy = communism. 3. NIMBYism. You can't build that (anything) there (anywhere) because it will Ruin England 4. Political short-termism. Projects get announced, then by the time there's been the usual NIMBY planning enquiry it either gets cancelled or truncated. Lots of roads to nowhere where the strategic plan gets lost in a change of government and yet another review 5. Lack of capability. Rail privatisation's lengthy hiatus in spending money on anything largely killed both the train building and infrastructure industry capabilities to do anything. Which is why we seem incapable of wiring a few miles of track or upgrading the signals without vast cost vs previous and foreign assistance.
If Shagger really wants to do something big, don't just reannounce already proposed schemes. Hive strategic planning off to a politically neutral organisation. Make the ORR independent of government. Almost all of these projects deliver either very positive ROI or positive community benefits. The ability to raise revenues from a variety of sources is critical - borrow money at government (near zero long term interest) rates on a long term payback.
They should also take a serious look at Musk's Boring Company. His ideas for standardising and massively speeding up the tunnel boring process are simple in concept, but appear to have potential massive cost savings. https://www.boringcompany.com/faq
I'd be interested to know what @Casino_Royale makes of them.
I don't have time to go into it in detail just now, as work beckons, but.. there's no such thing as a perfect delivery model. There are only models with different pros and cons, and you have to pick the right one for the situation you are in.
The vaccine taskforce certainly had some good ideas (get all the experts in the room, give them the authority - i.e. don't take all their decisions through layers and layers of civil service governance, where they are second or third guessed, and which takes months as there are lots of people who can say "no" - and let them get on with it) but money was no object and the Government was willing to take a lot of risk. Why? Because the country was in its worst recession for 300 years and tens of thousands of people were dying, so no cost or risk in getting an effective vaccine seemed unreasonable next to that.
Projects take a long time in the UK because they take a long time to start. Just look at all the fannying around with the Heathrow 3rd runway, or the Palace of Westminster refurbishment. That's because we are worried about the cost, the environmental impact, the disruption, and people aren't sure if they'll bear all the costs without the benefits, so it's politically divisive. Resolving that takes time. So that's one thing.
Once you're in delivery it becomes about cost, time, and quality control, with safety paramount. You can trade-off the first three but, in the UK and most Western countries, you can't on the last. The reason China gets things done quickly is they have no politics to delay the start (we do), money isn't a real issue and they don't give too much of a shit about safety. They get it done quick, people who are inconvenienced or die in the process are just collateral damage, or otherwise silenced, and they don't have to maintain audit trails or records.
When politicians talk about Project SPEED what they mean is they want projects delivered to world-class quality, very cheaply, very quickly and with no risk. Well, that world doesn't exist.
What I suspect will happen is that some projects will start quickly (accepting more risk on scope and price to do it) and then they will end up being delivered fairly quickly but not doing quite what everyone expected, or costing more than anticipated. Then, the politicians will start getting critiqued for cost and quality and the whole circus about delivery models will start again!
Why are we stopping HS2 at Birmingham might be a more immediate question for the PM to be asking his ministers.
Why are we doing HS2 at all would seem to be a more pertinent question.
That on would be because we need a transport system for the 21st Century.
Meaningless.
Nope - we either transport people around the country or we don't.
If it is easy to transport people round the country money is spent that would otherwise not be spent, deals are done that would otherwise not ben done and more money circulates around the economy more quickly.
The sentence above is not meaningless - it is vague, but not meaningless. Saying 'a transport system for the 21st century' is utterly without meaning. It's like saying 'The past is behind us - the future lies ahead!'. It can be applied to anything. I could argue for a system of canals up and down the country so we could all swim to work and call that a 21st century transport system - it would not indicate merit.
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
Why are we stopping HS2 at Birmingham might be a more immediate question for the PM to be asking his ministers.
Why are we doing HS2 at all would seem to be a more pertinent question.
That on would be because we need a transport system for the 21st Century.
Meaningless.
Nope - we either transport people around the country or we don't.
If it is easy to transport people round the country money is spent that would otherwise not be spent, deals are done that would otherwise not ben done and more money circulates around the economy more quickly.
So lets build roads and motorways then and stop the crazy madness that began with Blair that "but building roads means people will drive on them".
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
Chris Whitty went into quite some detail yesterday on the benefits.
But then that got drowned out because the media have no interest in that and instead people harped on about him saying there will be future surges after unlocking or in the winter, while cutting out the part where he said but people won't die as much due to the vaccines and we'll need to live with it.
Why are we stopping HS2 at Birmingham might be a more immediate question for the PM to be asking his ministers.
Why are we doing HS2 at all would seem to be a more pertinent question.
That on would be because we need a transport system for the 21st Century.
Meaningless.
HS2 is pretty simple: If you are building a new main line you build high speed. So the question is "do we need more rail capacity" to which the simple answer is yes. Other projects could have been built instead - the proposed M25 railway, more reopenings etc etc - all of which drives more traffic onto a rail network that has a significantly over-capacity core route between London and Birmingham.
Glib certainly, but not meaningless. I don't have time to do a full HS2 immersion today :-) .
I think there is a need for an effective and quick transport system across the country, which currently we do not have adequately. I hope that it will extend to Scotland.
I'd call this a strategic need, and I see benefits from reducing air traffic to helping the programme of moving Govt Departments out of London to work well. And many in between.
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
Why are we stopping HS2 at Birmingham might be a more immediate question for the PM to be asking his ministers.
Why are we doing HS2 at all would seem to be a more pertinent question.
That on would be because we need a transport system for the 21st Century.
Meaningless.
Nope - we either transport people around the country or we don't.
If it is easy to transport people round the country money is spent that would otherwise not be spent, deals are done that would otherwise not ben done and more money circulates around the economy more quickly.
So lets build roads and motorways then and stop the crazy madness that began with Blair that "but building roads means people will drive on them".
No s**t Sherlock, that's a good thing.
The justification for building roads is often that they will "reduce travel times". Given that increased road use rapidly eats up any such time saved in fresh congestion, these justifications seem to be based on a false premise.
A congested road is not a road being used efficiently to maximise its carrying capacity, yet we talk about road building as if it’s going to "reduce congestion" and thereby make the economy more efficient. If this is a false premise, it seems plausible that at least some road building schemes are effectively pointless & we should be using different metrics to justify which schemes we choose to build.
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
Chris Whitty went into quite some detail yesterday on the benefits.
But then that got drowned out because the media have no interest in that and instead people harped on about him saying there will be future surges after unlocking or in the winter, while cutting out the part where he said but people won't die as much due to the vaccines and we'll need to live with it.
Not £38bn worth of benefits, the much cheaper ONS weekly study achieves the same thing at the fraction of the cost. Without a proper monitored isolation programme the testing system was always going to have marginal value in bringing the R value down. It's just an extremely expensive near real time version of the ONS study.
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
Well said.
Its like the penny pinching about vaccines that Europe did. Could things have been done better here? Yes, of course. But compared to the cost of the pandemic, if T&T and the vaccine ends the pandemic a quarter earlier than would have otherwise been done then they'll more than repay their cost.
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
But all of those things could have been achieved with the ONS study, even the genomic sequencing and testing for variants could have been achieved at a tenth of the cost with an enhanced ONS study.
The testing system is probably the worst value for money of any recent government programme. I don't think that's a controversial point.
Boris has a piece in the Telegraph trying to save the union by promising a ton of road and rail projects. Dualing the A1 etc.
"So together with Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, I have asked Sir Peter Hendy to address the problem of Union connectivity. He has just produced his interim report, before final conclusions in the summer."
Good. Our infrastructure is backwards compared to so many other developed countries. For many reasons: 1. Crap project delivery. Dates all the way back to the open corruption of Ernest Marples in the 60s 2. Idiotic "who will pay for it" stupidity where investment = subsidy = communism. 3. NIMBYism. You can't build that (anything) there (anywhere) because it will Ruin England 4. Political short-termism. Projects get announced, then by the time there's been the usual NIMBY planning enquiry it either gets cancelled or truncated. Lots of roads to nowhere where the strategic plan gets lost in a change of government and yet another review 5. Lack of capability. Rail privatisation's lengthy hiatus in spending money on anything largely killed both the train building and infrastructure industry capabilities to do anything. Which is why we seem incapable of wiring a few miles of track or upgrading the signals without vast cost vs previous and foreign assistance.
If Shagger really wants to do something big, don't just reannounce already proposed schemes. Hive strategic planning off to a politically neutral organisation. Make the ORR independent of government. Almost all of these projects deliver either very positive ROI or positive community benefits. The ability to raise revenues from a variety of sources is critical - borrow money at government (near zero long term interest) rates on a long term payback.
They should also take a serious look at Musk's Boring Company. His ideas for standardising and massively speeding up the tunnel boring process are simple in concept, but appear to have potential massive cost savings. https://www.boringcompany.com/faq
I'd be interested to know what @Casino_Royale makes of them.
I don't have time to go into it in detail just now, as work beckons, but.. there's no such thing as a perfect delivery model. There are only models with different pros and cons, and you have to pick the right one for the situation you are in.
The vaccine taskforce certainly had some good ideas (get all the experts in the room, give them the authority - i.e. don't take all their decisions through layers and layers of civil service governance, where they are second or third guessed, and which takes months as there are lots of people who can say "no" - and let them get on with it) but money was no object and the Government was willing to take a lot of risk. Why? Because the country was in its worst recession for 300 years and tens of thousands of people were dying, so no cost or risk in getting an effective vaccine seemed unreasonable next to that.
Projects take a long time in the UK because they take a long time to start. Just look at all the fannying around with the Heathrow 3rd runway, or the Palace of Westminster refurbishment. That's because we are worried about the cost, the environmental impact, the disruption, and people aren't sure if they'll bear all the costs without the benefits, so it's politically divisive. Resolving that takes time. So that's one thing.
Once you're in delivery it becomes about cost, time, and quality control, with safety paramount. You can trade-off the first three but, in the UK and most Western countries, you can't on the last. The reason China gets things done quickly is they have no politics to delay the start (we do), money isn't a real issue and they don't give too much of a shit about safety. They get it done quick, people who are inconvenienced or die in the process are just collateral damage, or otherwise silenced, and they don't have to maintain audit trails or records.
When politicians talk about Project SPEED what they mean is they want projects delivered to world-class quality, very cheaply, very quickly and with no risk. Well, that world doesn't exist.
What I suspect will happen is that some projects will start quickly (accepting more risk on scope and price to do it) and then they will end up being delivered fairly quickly but not doing quite what everyone expected, or costing more than anticipated. Then, the politicians will start getting critiqued for cost and quality and the whole circus about delivery models will start again!
This is disorientating. I agree with 7 of the last 8 things @RochdalePioneers has said.
The problem I'd point to here is the ever-expanding zoo of statutory consultees in planning applications.
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
Well said.
Its like the penny pinching about vaccines that Europe did. Could things have been done better here? Yes, of course. But compared to the cost of the pandemic, if T&T and the vaccine ends the pandemic a quarter earlier than would have otherwise been done then they'll more than repay their cost.
But T&T hasn't done anything of the sort, it's lengthened the pandemic by months because it doesn't have any kind of serious isolation system and we've pissed £38bn away on it.
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
Well said.
Its like the penny pinching about vaccines that Europe did. Could things have been done better here? Yes, of course. But compared to the cost of the pandemic, if T&T and the vaccine ends the pandemic a quarter earlier than would have otherwise been done then they'll more than repay their cost.
I think that you also have to be realistic about the situation the government faced. The pressure to do something, anything, everything, was immense and rightly so. Some of the things that were done, such as the mad panic for PPE which proved to be largely unjustified and unneeded proved to be a waste of money. Others, such as the early investment in and the purchase of vaccine, were touched by genius. A lot was in between.
So what? I mean, the pandemic has cost over £1trn. Anything, everything that might help should be done by a government in such a scenario.
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
Well said.
Its like the penny pinching about vaccines that Europe did. Could things have been done better here? Yes, of course. But compared to the cost of the pandemic, if T&T and the vaccine ends the pandemic a quarter earlier than would have otherwise been done then they'll more than repay their cost.
But it's not done that because the government did very little to help people isolate when infectious, and nothing to check that they were, and the tracing was insufficient to identify people before they were infectious given what we know about pre-symptomatic spread.
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
But all of those things could have been achieved with the ONS study, even the genomic sequencing and testing for variants could have been achieved at a tenth of the cost with an enhanced ONS study.
The testing system is probably the worst value for money of any recent government programme. I don't think that's a controversial point.
No that couldn't have been achieved with the ONS study. The testing for the study was nothing like the testing for test and trace.
How much did the vaccine and test and trace cost?
Yes test and trace cost a lot of money, but how much is the pandemic costing us per week? It looks like between the UK's leading test and trace program and our leading vaccine we will end the pandemic a quarter before other comparable nations will. How much will that save us?
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
But all of those things could have been achieved with the ONS study, even the genomic sequencing and testing for variants could have been achieved at a tenth of the cost with an enhanced ONS study.
The testing system is probably the worst value for money of any recent government programme. I don't think that's a controversial point.
In defence of test and trace - the government threw money at everything, in the hope that something would work. In that world, some things are going to end up as complete duds. But hopefully some of the big gambles will pay off. Vaccines ended up working much better than anyone hoped, T&T much worse. Nightingales were an impressive achievment, but ultimately fairly purposeless. And this was true of everyone else, too. T&T didn't really work anywhere in the west. It was only a bigger failure for us because we threw more at it. But note that we threw more at vaccines too.
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
Well said.
Its like the penny pinching about vaccines that Europe did. Could things have been done better here? Yes, of course. But compared to the cost of the pandemic, if T&T and the vaccine ends the pandemic a quarter earlier than would have otherwise been done then they'll more than repay their cost.
But T&T hasn't done anything of the sort, it's lengthened the pandemic by months because it doesn't have any kind of serious isolation system and we've pissed £38bn away on it.
Exactly. The justification for T&T was that it would end the pandemic. It failed utterly, because the tracing was woeful & there was no support in place for the necessary isolation for those people who were traced.
For the "it was an emergency! the pandemic justifies taking risks!" crowd I have one, to me, very obvious question: the successful pandemic projects have been those where money was given to groups with expertise (vaccine development most obviously) and they were told to do whatever it takes. Why was the T&T money not given (even in part) to the existing public health infrastructure, which already had experience in this area on a smaller scale?
Frankly, trom the outside it looks like it was an enormously expensive boondoggle for Tory insider consultancies to feed on during a time when their existing customer base was short on cash. Grift on a massive scale.
European vaccine roll out - slow supply is only part of the story - country roll outs have been slow too (along with focussing on delivering second doses):
Some (eg Malta) have over-delivered EU supply by buying privately.
Very interesting article in the current Pharmaceutical Journal on the process Coventry Hospital went through to get ready to give the first vaccination, to Mrs Keenan.
There's something in there about national "store second dose" policies.
But also that EU-central have been trying to shift blame onto "inefficient national logistics" for some time. Various Brussels Journos have been pushing that in their role as Unofficial EU Press Officers.
In essence it was missing the logistical setup Matt Hancock told them here to get in place last year, so that it would be "ready when it arrived". For those that did not do it, it therefore fell back onto fitness for purpose (or not) of pre-existing infrastructure.
I saw an interesting article comparing eg which countries had fully developed population health databases.
Not £38bn worth of benefits, the much cheaper ONS weekly study achieves the same thing at the fraction of the cost. Without a proper monitored isolation programme the testing system was always going to have marginal value in bringing the R value down. It's just an extremely expensive near real time version of the ONS study.
That's not the fault of Test & Trace, there was no political will at all for a draconian isolation programme. i.e. Force people to isolate under threat of a severe penalty.
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
Well said.
Its like the penny pinching about vaccines that Europe did. Could things have been done better here? Yes, of course. But compared to the cost of the pandemic, if T&T and the vaccine ends the pandemic a quarter earlier than would have otherwise been done then they'll more than repay their cost.
I think that you also have to be realistic about the situation the government faced. The pressure to do something, anything, everything, was immense and rightly so. Some of the things that were done, such as the mad panic for PPE which proved to be largely unjustified and unneeded proved to be a waste of money. Others, such as the early investment in and the purchase of vaccine, were touched by genius. A lot was in between.
So what? I mean, the pandemic has cost over £1trn. Anything, everything that might help should be done by a government in such a scenario.
Exactly!
Billions on PPE, billions on test and trace, billions on vaccines . . . its all inconsequential next to the cost of the pandemic. The government has thrown everything at the wall, money is no object, and this is the result:
How much will this save the country? A billion? £37 billion? Or hundreds of billions?
£38 billion wasted? Hmm. If the sole metric of success is 'preventing another lockdown' then, yes. But I think testing millions of people a week must be providing at least some other benefit beyond that quite narrow view.
What benefits?
We had: Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else. A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time. A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus. We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
Well said.
Its like the penny pinching about vaccines that Europe did. Could things have been done better here? Yes, of course. But compared to the cost of the pandemic, if T&T and the vaccine ends the pandemic a quarter earlier than would have otherwise been done then they'll more than repay their cost.
This cannot possibly be true. We're in lockdown and will remain so until the vaccination program is nearing completion. How on earth do you calculate a three month reduction in end date from that as a result of T&T?
Edit: the only serious defence of T&T for me, is that it's effectively just a way of massaging the unemployment figures downwards. And that most of the cost would have otherwise gone on benefit payments of one kind or another anyway.
Comments
However things change and 3 years is a long time to keep a bet open for.
In the interim I hope H&M will get asked some straight questions and supply some evidence, as opposed to self-contradictory soft focus stuff. And perhaps to explain the matters that are obviously untrue.
When she said "I contemplate suicide" I suspect most people took away that she was on the verge of taking her own life.
However, I've *contemplated* suicide a lot when I've been very stressed or fed up. Several times. What this involves is me fantasising for a brief second the instant relief of ending everything by a knife in the chest or gun to the head, following which everything goes away, I can sleep peacefully and I'm free. Sometimes it happens in dreams. Sometimes for a brief moment when I'm awake - "sigh, why do I exist?" - sort of thing. I think about it, let it out, and then it goes away.
Why? Because I realise in seconds it's crazy and stupid. It would be highly traumatic, end in my oblivion, forever, and leave my wife and kid behind mourning (and angry at) me forever, and my problems would simply become someone else's. I'd also miss out on the beauty and wonder of life.
So, really, I have absolutely no intention of really doing it. At no point have I even started to research it, yet alone buy pills, or size up a railway station platform, or look for a weapon. It's just a few seconds on the loo or on my bed from time to time. I'm really fantasising for about a shutdown or reset button. A "go away and leave me alone" switch. And maybe just realising to myself that I have a number of options - I often fantasise about resigning the next day, and running away - or cashing everything I have in, and going to live in Goa or New Zealand -and that's all really just part of me convincing myself I have ultimate control over my life.
So, yes, she may have "contemplated" it like I did, and do not irregularly, and suspect many people do, as she wasn't enjoying it and trying to process the best way out. But she's quite happy to not qualify it or describe it and thus let everyone assume the worst. Because that way she's most likely to get everyone's sympathy on her side.
Maybe she was entirely geninue about it, and on the verge of doing the deed, I don't know. But I think there was a lot of insinuation in her interview, and there were several statements made that I think were clearly insincere - like the idea she didn't do any research into Harry or the Royal Family. So I don't really take the veracity of what she says about anything at face value now because she provides no detail or context through which that can be assessed, which makes me conclude that she takes grains of facts and incidents, extrapolates them so they fit her assumed narrative, and then tells us a story that fits what she wants us to hear.
By ensuring all trains run at the same speed it's possible to double the capacity on both the existing and new lines which means 1 new pair of tracks increases the number of trains slots available 3 or 4 fold.
Do we need it post covid - I actually think we do as it's very likely work is going to change in a way that makes long distance travel more rather than less common.
Or maybe next PM?
After a year, and billions expended, the continuing marginal efficacy of system for ensuring the isolation of those who test positive, and their contacts, is probably the single most important failure.
Take sexuality out of the equation and change it to something more mundane like hair colour. Some people like blondes, some people like brunettes, some people like redheads and some people aren't bothered.
If someone was married to a brunette, gets divorced, then marries a blonde, then would you think they had been 'living a lie'?
And the LibDems are suffering more than most from the SNP, because the latter is the third party in Parliament, and therefore gets 'called'. Until that happened the Lib or LibDem leader had a chance of getting attention both in Parliament and the Press. Chances which Grimond, Thorpe and Ashdown especially could and did take.
50 odd seats belonging to the SNP makes a hung Parliament much, much more likely than historically so. And a Lab Majority much, much less likely than historically so.
Unless Labour recover some seats in Scotland, I think a Majority is just completely beyond them.
I don't see Keir 'Union Jack' Starmer and his vacuous side-kick Anwas 'Private School' Sarwar being the ones able to reverse the years of Labour decline in Scotland. Does 'Red, White & Blue' Keir even understand how all his Jacks are playing out in Scotland & Wales ?
It needs a Tory fuck-up of truly gargantuan proportions for Labour to win without Scotland.
So, the Tory Maj odds look right, but Hung Parly too low and Labour Maj too high.
Blair against a collapsed government could do it but all that 22% chance rests entirely upon future contingents. It looks high.
Autophagy chokes on SARS-CoV-2
SARS-CoV-2 ORF3a prevents autophagosome-lysosome fusion.
https://stke.sciencemag.org/content/14/673/eabh3628
The UK hit 25% of population receiving a first dose on the 17th February.
One of those snippets that makes me think our eventual uptake will be miles higher than the USA.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2005/nov/23/business.pressandpublishing
https://twitter.com/BrunoBrussels/status/1369578716683239432?s=20
https://historycollection.com/the-cross-dressing-trial-that-scandalized-victorian-england/3/
1. Crap project delivery. Dates all the way back to the open corruption of Ernest Marples in the 60s
2. Idiotic "who will pay for it" stupidity where investment = subsidy = communism.
3. NIMBYism. You can't build that (anything) there (anywhere) because it will Ruin England
4. Political short-termism. Projects get announced, then by the time there's been the usual NIMBY planning enquiry it either gets cancelled or truncated. Lots of roads to nowhere where the strategic plan gets lost in a change of government and yet another review
5. Lack of capability. Rail privatisation's lengthy hiatus in spending money on anything largely killed both the train building and infrastructure industry capabilities to do anything. Which is why we seem incapable of wiring a few miles of track or upgrading the signals without vast cost vs previous and foreign assistance.
If Shagger really wants to do something big, don't just reannounce already proposed schemes. Hive strategic planning off to a politically neutral organisation. Make the ORR independent of government. Almost all of these projects deliver either very positive ROI or positive community benefits. The ability to raise revenues from a variety of sources is critical - borrow money at government (near zero long term interest) rates on a long term payback.
And as I have been saying 2019, Boris just sees a good Labour policy as a good policy. And implements it before Labour gets power to do it themselves. That leaves Labour with a manifesto of stuff the voters look at askance.
Personally I cannot see a mass market for GB news. There isn't much market already for serious news, politics and current affairs on TV. It looks to me a niche vanity project by people who think their opinions matter.
Clinton, Bush the Younger and Trump were all born in 1946. In 1992 this generation was young in Presidential terms - 46 years old - but in 2020 they are old - 74 years old - but it's the same generation.
When that generation's grasp on power is loosened I'd expect the cult of the young to be re-established.
Though PB is perhaps calling the kettle black.
His ideas for standardising and massively speeding up the tunnel boring process are simple in concept, but appear to have potential massive cost savings.
https://www.boringcompany.com/faq
I'd be interested to know what @Casino_Royale makes of them.
Sky News's total *weekly* reach is a bit over 9m. There must be plenty of times in the day when they've got fewer viewers than their tweets are reaching.
ETA: The "small" (i.e. 'who?') news channels seem to get about 200-500k viewers a week. That's a good indicator for where GB news sits.
Come forward a decade. The Scottish government was building the A1(M)* extension out past Dunbar and offered to keep going to the Border if England would do Morpeth - Berwick. As The Highways Agency wasn't interested the Scottish scheme ended at Dunbar.
*What is now the A74(M) was built by M6 Fastlink Ltd and has M6 plated over by A74(M) on all the signs. Some have been removed on slip roads along the route. Can't be called M6 decreed the new Scottish Parliament, that is an English motorway. Similar for the A1(M), A90(M) and all the other roads in Scotland with motorway restrictions and green signs.
Perhaps the opening credits to their show could include a photo of a more senior newsman with a younger woman on the make, showing that not all is bitterness and rancour. Is there such a photo somewhere?
But the US and UK have very different starting points. With the exception of the National Enquirer et al, the US press is largely sober and likes to project a factual air, though politically-aware readers can see the biases. In the UK it's nearly all a mixture of entertainment and bias, with balanced representation of the facts coming a poor third. I don't think most people would mind a more proactive PCC with more teeth, so that a clearly deliberate misrepresentation would carry a painful fine as well as a requirement for a large front-page apology.
In case anyone's interested, I have a complaint in with the ASA at the moment. The AHDB (whose job is to promote British agriculture) had a series of ads suggesting that meat is based on water from the sky and crops that humans can't eat, with an illustration of animals happily cantering over fields. Since most meat comes from grim factory farms in which the animals never leave the building and are fed on imported grain (eminently edible by humans), I argued that it was misleading. I'm not against people eating meat if it's humanely-raised, and I accept the right of consumers to eat any old meat that the Government allows. But I don't think that consumers should be actively misled, and that's probably a consensus view among most people. The ASA have yet to rule.
https://twitter.com/TokenAngels/status/1369238816456925185
Yep - there is little chance a NFT is going to escape very close inspection when it comes to dodgy money.
That's not to say you shouldn't invest in transport infrastructure, nor that transport investment can't have significant benefits - just that it is very hard to demonstrate those benefits in advance or to make the case for it apolitically.
Also, for Labour to win, the opposition has to be credible with a known leader who is liked by voters . Labour have neither right now.
I suppose that doesn't make as snappy a headline for Tw@tter though does it?
https://www.politico.eu/article/coronavirus-covid19-vaccine-deliveries-in-europe-by-the-numbers/
Some (eg Malta) have over-delivered EU supply by buying privately.
What is interesting is why it might be cheaper and the opposition to it.
SpaceX ripped up the launch business by not following the contracting-out-to-a-contractor-who-contracts-out-to-a-{10 iterations here} model.
What the Boring Company is looking at is a similar concept. And the opposition to contracts with them is also interesting - I've heard quotes about "This is a high value, high pay industry - we don't want it disrupted"
A lot of people feed off big public contracts. When space launch went from 500 million a launch to 50 million (and falling) a lot of people lost their rice bowls.
Today's Comres gives a 6% Tory lead, actually 1% smaller than the 7% lead Major got in 1992 which gave him a majority of 21.
Even if Test and Trace had only managed to slow things down a little it would have made a massive difference, but they still can't tell us how many people self-isolate when asked to?
The cost of getting the testing strategy so wrong probably runs into the hundreds of billions when taking economic damage into account.
There needs to be a very thorough investigation into this so we don't repeat those mistakes when the next pandemic arrives from China.
If it is easy to transport people round the country money is spent that would otherwise not be spent, deals are done that would otherwise not ben done and more money circulates around the economy more quickly.
https://twitter.com/stefanauer_hku/status/1369589456831799298?s=20
The EU "exports" vaccines because Pfizer (a US company) chose to site production there.
The vaccine taskforce certainly had some good ideas (get all the experts in the room, give them the authority - i.e. don't take all their decisions through layers and layers of civil service governance, where they are second or third guessed, and which takes months as there are lots of people who can say "no" - and let them get on with it) but money was no object and the Government was willing to take a lot of risk. Why? Because the country was in its worst recession for 300 years and tens of thousands of people were dying, so no cost or risk in getting an effective vaccine seemed unreasonable next to that.
Projects take a long time in the UK because they take a long time to start. Just look at all the fannying around with the Heathrow 3rd runway, or the Palace of Westminster refurbishment. That's because we are worried about the cost, the environmental impact, the disruption, and people aren't sure if they'll bear all the costs without the benefits, so it's politically divisive. Resolving that takes time. So that's one thing.
Once you're in delivery it becomes about cost, time, and quality control, with safety paramount. You can trade-off the first three but, in the UK and most Western countries, you can't on the last. The reason China gets things done quickly is they have no politics to delay the start (we do), money isn't a real issue and they don't give too much of a shit about safety. They get it done quick, people who are inconvenienced or die in the process are just collateral damage, or otherwise silenced, and they don't have to maintain audit trails or records.
When politicians talk about Project SPEED what they mean is they want projects delivered to world-class quality, very cheaply, very quickly and with no risk. Well, that world doesn't exist.
What I suspect will happen is that some projects will start quickly (accepting more risk on scope and price to do it) and then they will end up being delivered fairly quickly but not doing quite what everyone expected, or costing more than anticipated. Then, the politicians will start getting critiqued for cost and quality and the whole circus about delivery models will start again!
No s**t Sherlock, that's a good thing.
But then that got drowned out because the media have no interest in that and instead people harped on about him saying there will be future surges after unlocking or in the winter, while cutting out the part where he said but people won't die as much due to the vaccines and we'll need to live with it.
Rosena could be fantastic in the future
I think there is a need for an effective and quick transport system across the country, which currently we do not have adequately. I hope that it will extend to Scotland.
I'd call this a strategic need, and I see benefits from reducing air traffic to helping the programme of moving Govt Departments out of London to work well. And many in between.
Probably the world's most comprehensive testing system resulting in us having more accurate information about the spread of the virus than anyone else.
A database which allowed us to do the genomic sequencing and the ability to check the spread of variants in all but real time.
A large number of people traced and self isolating inhibiting the further spread of the virus.
We now have the capacity to do mass testing facilitating the reopening of schools as a first step.
Could some things have been done better? Undoubtedly. Was it good value for money? Very hard to say. But if it is facilitating us coming out of lockdown a few weeks earlier (given the quality of information we have) then yes, it probably was.
A congested road is not a road being used efficiently to maximise its carrying capacity, yet we talk about road building as if it’s going to "reduce congestion" and thereby make the economy more efficient. If this is a false premise, it seems plausible that at least some road building schemes are effectively pointless & we should be using different metrics to justify which schemes we choose to build.
Its like the penny pinching about vaccines that Europe did. Could things have been done better here? Yes, of course. But compared to the cost of the pandemic, if T&T and the vaccine ends the pandemic a quarter earlier than would have otherwise been done then they'll more than repay their cost.
The testing system is probably the worst value for money of any recent government programme. I don't think that's a controversial point.
The problem I'd point to here is the ever-expanding zoo of statutory consultees in planning applications.
So what? I mean, the pandemic has cost over £1trn. Anything, everything that might help should be done by a government in such a scenario.
How much did the vaccine and test and trace cost?
Yes test and trace cost a lot of money, but how much is the pandemic costing us per week? It looks like between the UK's leading test and trace program and our leading vaccine we will end the pandemic a quarter before other comparable nations will. How much will that save us?
Vaccines ended up working much better than anyone hoped, T&T much worse. Nightingales were an impressive achievment, but ultimately fairly purposeless.
And this was true of everyone else, too. T&T didn't really work anywhere in the west. It was only a bigger failure for us because we threw more at it. But note that we threw more at vaccines too.
For the "it was an emergency! the pandemic justifies taking risks!" crowd I have one, to me, very obvious question: the successful pandemic projects have been those where money was given to groups with expertise (vaccine development most obviously) and they were told to do whatever it takes. Why was the T&T money not given (even in part) to the existing public health infrastructure, which already had experience in this area on a smaller scale?
Frankly, trom the outside it looks like it was an enormously expensive boondoggle for Tory insider consultancies to feed on during a time when their existing customer base was short on cash. Grift on a massive scale.
But also that EU-central have been trying to shift blame onto "inefficient national logistics" for some time. Various Brussels Journos have been pushing that in their role as Unofficial EU Press
Officers.
In essence it was missing the logistical setup Matt Hancock told them here to get in place last year, so that it would be "ready when it arrived". For those that did not do it, it therefore fell back onto fitness for purpose (or not) of pre-existing infrastructure.
I saw an interesting article comparing eg which countries had fully developed population health databases.
Billions on PPE, billions on test and trace, billions on vaccines . . . its all inconsequential next to the cost of the pandemic. The government has thrown everything at the wall, money is no object, and this is the result:
How much will this save the country? A billion? £37 billion? Or hundreds of billions?
Edit: the only serious defence of T&T for me, is that it's effectively just a way of massaging the unemployment figures downwards. And that most of the cost would have otherwise gone on benefit payments of one kind or another anyway.